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Sweet Grass Vodka owner Jarrod Swanger toasts with actor Jeremy Renner, then his celebrity brand rep, in September 2023.
The owner of a rapidly unraveling Charleston vodka company sold his million-dollar house and lost a large chunk of the profits in a court order.
Jarrod Swanger bought a 2,300-square-foot house in Mount Pleasant in 2020 months after launching Sweet Grass Vodka, a business investors now say was built on a series of falsehoods. Swanger convinced those investors to give him millions of dollars and lured actor Jeremy Renner to be the face of his brand, even calling him a co-owner.
Renner cut ties with Swanger earlier this year, while people who sunk money into Sweet Grass are suing Swanger for failing to pay back nearly $750,000 in loans. He also stands accused of owing Renner nearly half a million dollars and employees as much as five weeks in back pay.
Swanger officially sold his Snee Farm home for $1.7 million on June 21, when the deal closed. A sales contract was signed in late April, court records show.
More than a quarter million dollars — the bulk of Swanger’s share of the profit from the sale — was handed over to the court as part of an agreement in a lawsuit brought by investor Stephen McCord.
Alicia and Jarrod Swanger pose for a portrait in the future location of Sweet Grass Vodka inside of The Refinery on Meeting Street Road on Dec. 9, 2021, in Charleston.
The agreement allowed Swanger’s wife, Alicia, to keep half of the $680,000 in net proceeds after a previous order by Judge Jennifer McCoy had called for all proceeds from the sale to be seized. An exemption in South Carolina law also allows Jarrod Swanger to keep $73,700 from the sale.
The caveat protecting Swanger’s wife was the main reason he agreed to the June 12 order, said Swanger’s lawyer, Ronald Jones Jr. He said Swanger’s wife has nothing to do with the business or debts of her husband and noted the judge has yet to make an order on who is to receive Swanger’s cut of the profits.
McCord and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Far from the jet-setting lifestyle brushing shoulders with celebrities he enjoyed in recent years, Swanger’s story has devolved into a tale of professional failure mixed with personal tragedy.
With his business shuttered and debts mounting, Swanger’s 16-month-old son fell into the family’s backyard swimming pool on June 11 and nearly drowned.
Swanger and his wife were both at home when the child was found unresponsive in the water, a police incident report states.
The Mount Pleasant house sold this month by Sweet Grass Vodka owner Jarrod Swanger. A judge ordered his share of the profits held by the court until a final decision is made on one of the lawsuits against him.
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Police are still investigating and have kept further details under wraps, while refusing to release records related to the incident. A spokeswoman for Mount Pleasant police could not be reached for comment.
The infant was taken to East Cooper Medical Center and then to the pediatric critical care unit at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Shawn Jenkins Hospital. The child was still there as of midweek. No update was available June 28.
Swanger has been selling off his furniture on the Snee Farm Villa HOA Facebook page, posting this month: “Anyone need an office set up for cheap? Or just the table or just the bookshelves?”
Nearly 20 people, among them investors and former employees, told The Post and Courier that Swanger took millions from investors while operating a business built on deception. The craft vodka, billed as made from locally sourced potatoes in a Charleston distillery from his wife’s family’s old Polish recipe, is a watered-down version of alcohol made elsewhere. The farm where Swanger claimed he bought the potatoes confirmed it never sold to him—and it hasn’t had a potato crop in two years.
Investors say they never got their money back, and Swanger never provided them annual tax forms the IRS requires for business partnerships.
On June 14, a judge ruled in favor of South Carolina Federal Credit Union in one of four outstanding lawsuits against Swanger that stated he owed $26,154.30 on a defaulted loan. Swanger also was ordered to pay the credit union’s legal fees. Court records show that loan was repaid as of June 25.
Other lawsuits claim he still owes $37,000 on his bottling equipment and $113,466 as part of an unpaid loan.
Alicia Swanger holds one of the company’s bottles inside the future location at The Refinery on Meeting Street Road on Dec. 9, 2021, in Charleston.
Sweet Grass Vodka and its Sweetgrass Lounge has been closed since April, when Swanger was booted out of the company’s space, located inside The Refinery at 1640 Meeting Street Road on Charleston’s upper peninsula, for failure to pay rent. Swanger still went on to host parties at the lounge until his mid-April eviction, even though his liquor license was revoked in March.
He also failed to pay state income taxes in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Sweet Grass Vodka hit shelves in 2020 and quickly landed in Total Wine locations, restaurants and six states across the Southeast, including South Carolina. Two years later, Swanger was telling people his company was worth $26 million and would reach $40 million in annual sales by 2023.
In reality, according to a former business partner with copies of the brand’s distribution figures, Sweet Grass in 2023 sold roughly 2,000 cases. Even at retail prices on the company website, that comes to well below $1 million.
John Ramsey is a reporter on The Post and Courier’s Watchdog and Public Service team.
He has worked as an editor and reporter in Richmond, Va., Fayetteville, N.C. and Rocky Mount, N.C.
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